Forgive me for giving this post a more vapid response than perhaps it deserves.

I think it's fair to put forward "The Working Hour" as the Tears for Fears song that best explains life in the year 2021.

But considering the disproportionate effect the pandemic has had on female participation in the labor force, should we not also consider "Mothers Talk"?

But then if we want to get into the broader economic trends being brought to bear by the forces of globalized capitalism, shouldn't it be "Change" or even "Break It Down Again"?

Well, if you want to focus more specifically on Big Tech and China, then it's got to be "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."

No, wait. Has to be "Mad World." Or when you get right down to it, "Shout." Or "Broken." Or "The Hurting."

“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

-Buckminster Fuller

Urgutha @3, I feel compelled to offer a competing perspective in response to that famous Buckminster Fuller quote and to Mr. Mudede's observation: "The pandemic made clear to many that the working hours and productivity were not linked by nature but by culture."

If the link between living and working as signified by the phrase "earning a living" is a cultural construct, then breaking that link is just as much a cultural construct. Civilization exists to buffer us from the forces of nature. But if there is any lesson the 21st century is relentlessly trying to knock into our heads, it's that civilization does not exist outside the forces of nature.

I'd love to expand on this, but sadly that pesky work-live linkage is beckoning...

@5,
Is that really a competing perspective though? If I'm reading you correctly, you're agreeing--the idea that we all have to work for a living is a cultural construct.

Work itself is human nature, not culture. Agriculture, animal husbandry, etc., all came about naturally, as a means of survival. But the "40 hour work week" or even the idea that if one does not "work" then one is not really a member of society (or of the civilization) is purely cultural. And yeah, it takes a change in culture to break the "earning a living" link. That could very easily happen too, as the culture of "work" changed multiple times in the 20th century alone.

So yes, work itself is human nature, but the nature of work is a product of the culture.

Going back to the original quote, "39% of the people working from home during the pandemic "would consider quitting if their employers weren’t flexible about remote work." So, presumably, a 3/5ths majority would not even consider quitting if their employers required constant face-time at the office. Some number of that 39% would consider quitting, but not do so. Therefore, we're looking at an even smaller minority. Not everyone has the luxury of working from home in the first place, so the absolute number is yet smaller. Finally, the employers are merely required to be "flexible." This 39% looks less significant with each consideration.

While a daily commute can be a grind, those of us lucky enough to work in creative, collaborative positions do really miss our office environments. How many times has a great idea come from accidentally overhearing a conversation in hallway or cantina? Going to check on matters for oneself can be a huge part of doing a good job. Working from home can be isolating and full of distractions, too. I'm looking forward to my upcoming return to office work.

Then again, you do have to secretly love a post claiming, "...Much of [Office] Work Is a Waste of Time," when you understand it was written by a guy who not only got paid to write about his day-drinking adventures, but also about his subsequent (ab)use of prescription opiates to treat his resultant hangovers. (Gotta give Charles his due there, that's some mighty awesome chutzpah, even from him...)

Anyway, back to working from home.

@7 "those of us lucky enough to work in creative, collaborative positions do really miss our office environments"

SOME of us miss our office environments. Some of us do not. My employer will probably be requiring us in the office a couple of days out of the week come the fall and I am OK with that, but the absence of my onerous commute has been an immense quality of life improvement.

Seems pretty understandable to miss the office if that was the only place you got any social interaction before the pandemic. This is probably the case for more people than it ought to be, and it's not entirely their fault, either-- there are more than a few employers out there that actively foster it.

@7 "those of us lucky enough to work in creative, collaborative positions do really miss our office environments."

Nothing says creativity like returning to the extremely tired and uninspired office model of working. Real mold breaking stuff.

When people say shit this like this I assume what they really mean is they miss peacocking around in front of others, writing buzzwords on whiteboards.

Figured out why #12 loves being in the office so much: they're a fuckin manager. Pretty sure the only people who are just DYING to get back into their erstwhile office settings are the petit bourgeoisie that love holding their workplace lordship over their direct reports. I've yet to see anyone who has the station of Peon or higher seriously support returning to an environment where a white collar sclub oversees their moment to moment activities. It's a fucking exhausting existence and those of us who are boxed into our """careers""" are made all the more miserable by being dragged back into it.

The pandemic proved that every accommodation disabled people were told could never be made could be made - as long as it would help able bodied people do their jobs.

There is absolutely zero reason this country has to go back to the way things were pre-pandemic, nor should it. Flexibility in workplace accommodations should be the norm and there need to be even new norms - especially with regard to how much people are paid, child care provided for parents (especially the millions of women who had to leave the workforce during the pandemic to take care of their children) and time off needed in general to do all of the things human beings need to do that are not work related.

@10: Or, the absence of normal social activities during the pandemic has those of us who enjoy our co-workers' positive energy wanting to have more of it. (Just as we'd like to buy our mates some pints at the pub.) My employer already explicitly states that "face-time at the office is not rewarded," so we're there because we want to be.

@11: My co-workers and I have desks on the mezzanine of the hangar where our aircraft get built. We get to see our new designs take shape before our eyes. So yes, our office is a very creative environment indeed. Being able to go to our labs, shops, or hangar floor and check on the progress of our work is something I very much miss. (One can see only so much detail through an iPhone's camera.)

@15: "Flexibility in workplace accommodations should be the norm..."

For many of us, it was, long before the pandemic. And it will continue to be. It depends upon the type of work being done and how. Enforced remote working, in the long term, could prove to be as damaging as forced in-office working can be. We tolerated enforced remote working only because it was temporary, and the alternative was millions of deaths. Now that it will return to being optional, maybe we'll choose to implement it on something like the scale it has been for the past year. Maybe not. But no temporary hardship ever implies permanent hardship is a good idea.

@11: Classic blue collar jealousy. But you're not missing anything if you're content with the job you have, so why not be content with others enjoying their jobs?